Richard Howard Stafford CrossmanOBE (15 December 1907– 5 April 1974), sometimes known as Dick Crossman, was a British Labour Party leader in Parliament, as well as a leader of the party's Zionists and anti-communists. Late in his life, Crossman was editor of the New Statesman. He is remembered today for his highly revealing three-volume Diaries of a Cabinet Minister.

Political career

Crossman entered the House of Commons at the 1945 general election, as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Coventry East, a seat he held until shortly before he died in 1974. During 1945–46 he served, on the nomination of the Foreign SecretaryErnest Bevin, as a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the Problems of European Jewry and Palestine. The committee's report, submitted in April 1946, included a recommendation for 100,000 Jewish displaced persons to be permitted to enter Palestine. The recommendation was rejected by the British government, after which Crossman led the socialist opposition to the official British policy for Palestine. That incurred Bevin's enmity, and may have been the primary factor which prevented Crossman from achieving ministerial rank during the 1945–51 government. Crossman initially supported the Arab cause but after meeting Chaim Weizmann, he became a lifelong Zionist. In his diary, he described Weizmann as "one of the very few great men I have ever met."[9]

In 1957, Crossman joined Aneurin Bevan and Morgan Phillips in a controversial lawsuit for libel against The Spectator, which had described the men as drinking heavily during a socialist conference in Italy.[10] Having sworn that the charges were untrue, the three collected damages from the magazine. Many years later, Crossman's posthumously published diaries confirmed the truth of The Spectator's charges.[11]

He was Secretary of State for Health and Social Services from 1968 to 1970, in which position he worked on an ambitious proposal to supplement Britain's flat state pension with an earnings-related element. The proposal had not, however, been passed into law at the time the Labour Party lost the 1970 general election. During the months of political turmoil that led up to the election loss, Crossman had been considered, however briefly, as a last-minute option to replace Wilson as Prime Minister.

Books and journalism

After the general election defeat, Crossman resigned from the Labour front bench in 1970 to become editor of the New Statesman, where he had been a frequent contributor and assistant editor from 1938 until 1955. He left the New Statesman in 1972.

Crossman was a prolific writer and editor. In Plato Today (1937) he imagines Plato visiting Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Plato criticises Nazi and communist politicians for misusing the ideas he had set forth in The Republic.[12] After the war, he edited The God That Failed (1949), a collection of anti-communist essays.

He is best remembered for his colourful and highly subjective three-volume Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, written whilst living in Vincent Square and published posthumously from 1975 to 1977 and covering his time in government from 1964 to 1970. The diaries appeared after he had died, and following a legal battle by the government to block publication. One of Crossman's legal executors was Michael Foot, then a cabinet minister, who opposed his own government's attempts to suppress the diaries.[13] Among other things, the diaries describe his battles with "the Dame", his Permanent Secretary Evelyn Sharp, Baroness Sharp, GBE (1903–1985), the first woman in Britain to hold the position. Crossman's backbench diaries were published in 1981.

Crossman's diaries were an acknowledged source for the highly successful TV comedy series Yes Minister.[14][15]

Death

Crossman died of liver cancer in April 1974 at his home in Oxfordshire.

Quotation

The Civil Service is profoundly deferential– 'Yes, Minister! No, Minister! If you wish it, Minister!' [16]

Published works

Government and the Governed (A History of Political Ideas and Political Practice) London: Cristophers (1939)

Plato Today New York: Oxford University Press (1939)

Palestine Mission: A Personal Record New York: Harper (1947)

The God That Failed New York: Harper (1950) (editor)

The Politics of Socialism New York: Atheneum (1965)

The Myths of Cabinet Government Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1972)

↑ "Messrs Bevan, Morgan Phillips and Richard Crossman...puzzled the Italians by their capacity to fill themselves like tanks with whisky and coffee... Although the Italians were never sure the British delegation were sober, they always attributed to them an immense political acumen." See Bose, Mihir, "Britain's Libel Laws: Malice Aforethought", History Today, 5 May 2013.

↑ Roy Jenkins wrote of his former colleagues (in "Aneurin Bevan" in Portraits and Miniatures, 2011) that they "sailed to victory on the unfortunate combination of Lord Chief Justice Goddard's prejudice against the anti-hanging and generally libertarian Spectator of those days and the perjury of the plaintiffs, subsequently exposed in Crossman's endlessly revealing diaries." Geoffrey Wheatcroft wrote (in The Guardian, 18 March 2000, "Lies and Libel"): "Fifteen years later, Crossman boasted (in my presence) that they had indeed all been toping heavily, and that at least one of them had been blind drunk." Mihir Bose (in "Britain's Libel Laws: Malice Aforethought", History Today, 5 May 2013) quotes Bevan's biographer, John Campbell, to the effect that the case had destroyed the career of the young journalist involved, Jenny Nicholson.